{"id":94,"date":"2009-03-05T20:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2009\/03\/saving-gandhis-legacy-hypocrisy-anyone.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:35:42","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:35:42","slug":"saving-gandhis-legacy-hypocrisy-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2009\/03\/saving-gandhis-legacy-hypocrisy-anyone.html","title":{"rendered":"Saving Gandhi’s legacy : hypocrisy anyone ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gandhi<\/a>\"\"See my earlier post<\/a>; it is indeed the week for stupidity. I refer of course to the efforts by the Government of India to save its \u201cnational heritage\u201d. By \u201cnational heritage\u201d I do not mean the beautiful, ancient buildings that lie neglected (the last time I visited the Taj Mahal, there were honeycombs on the high ceilings of the entrances \u2013 I am not sure if it has been cleaned up), or by the polluted river Ganges, or by the myriad number of things that stand out as being part of India\u2019s national heritage. No, what they mean when they say \u201cNational heritage\u201d are MK Gandhi\u2019s possessions which were to be auctioned off.<\/p>\n

I am not a great fan of (all) Gandhiji\u2019s beliefs, but I do know that the man stood for simplicity. Gandhi is no longer alive, but he is still alive among us, say many. Gandhi\u2019s legacy is his high thinking; it is not material. The man preached and stood for basic human decency, the ability of each person to be good and to do good. For a man such as him, one of spartan habits, with not much desire of material possessions, would he care for the Government\u2019s efforts? Would he even put his possessions ahead of the people ? Would he actually say \u2013 go save my glasses, my sandals, and let rot the real heritage of India \u2013 it\u2019s people? I believe that the Government is missing the point.<\/p>\n

But they went ahead full steam, missing the point as best as they could. As the \u201cTimes Now\u201d channel so succinctly summed up, the GOI had a Game plan, and it was as follows :<\/p>\n

– Buy items through direct bidding by the GOI
– Appeal to rich NRIs\/American-Indians to buy and donate the items to India
– Negotiate\/stop auction<\/p>\n

The Government would have bid for the items, if all else failed.<\/p>\n

Union Minister for Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni has told NDTV that the Indian government will do everything possible to ensure that Mahatma Gandhi’s belongings are brought back to India with or without auction.<\/p>\n

She said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has, in fact, authorised the government to bid for the items if all other efforts fail.
<\/i><\/p>\n

Wow ! As much as I respect Gandhi, I cannot see how the Indian Government could have thought of using up the Indian tax-payer\u2019s money to buy up these items. Yes, you can get these effects and put them in a Museum where someone will, for a fee, be able to view them. But ask a villager, or a slum-dweller if they\u2019d rather have a pucca house instead, and you\u2019ll see. Ask women who have no access to toilets or basic sanitation if they\u2019d rather have sanitary toilets instead of the ability to view Gandhi\u2019s effects, and see what they say. Or why even go to the villages \u2013 ask a city-dweller if they\u2019d rather have better roads, and electricity without load-shedding, than the ability to view Gandhiji\u2019s effects \u2013 and you\u2019ll see what I mean. Ask them if they would rather have public servants who treated them like human beings (as Gandhi insisted we all do), rather than the pompous, self-important bureacrats that now rule over India, and you\u2019ll know.<\/p>\n

The poor and the backward classes were a great concern of Gandhi\u2019s \u2013 he called them Harijan. The GOI is effectively ignoring these very important people in it\u2019s over-riding desire to save Gandhi\u2019s possessions. And look at present day India \u2013 is it Gandhian in any sense of the word ? From men who attack women on the roads<\/a>, and get away with it<\/a>, in connivance with the police, to the everyday rampant corruption, to the rude, aggressive nature of people who share the same space as you<\/a> \u2013 is it even remotely Gandhian? Is it?<\/p>\n

The GOI\u2019s frantic efforts to save India\u2019s \u201cprecious national heritage\u201d is not only a prime case of mis-placed priorities \u2013 it is also supremely ironical. I would laugh if I were not already so pissed off. What gets me is the hypocrisy of these “saviors” who have no clue about what Gandhi stood for. No one follows Gandhi’s principles – no one. All they do is talk. Is that all Gandhi means to us (the “saviors” of his legacy) – a plate, a bowl, a watch and his sandals ? Is that it ? What about what Gandhi stood for ? I saw a photo of Gandhi’s plate and bowl on auction, and was moved – what a simple man ! And what they have done to his memory ! It’s sacrilege !<\/p>\n

The GOI was striving so hard to buy up his things at any cost. Why do they not strive so hard to provide education or food, or even decent governance (Gandhi would be better pleased) ? A whole lot of money to buy things of a man, whose principles we don’t follow, and in reality have no regard for. When did the GOI last get in such a tizzy over the common-man\u2019s priorities ? Yup \u2013 you may not have bijli-pani or sadak, you may not have a functioning judicial system (a backlog of cases which will take several hundred years to clear), or governing bodies who care, but what you do have is India\u2019s pride \u2013 Gandhi\u2019s glasses and chappals. Savor them and fill your stomachs.<\/p>\n

Does the Government have nothing better to do, or is it so rolling in money that it fails to find better use of India\u2019s limited resources? James Otis, the owner of these articles, seemed to have a better idea than the GOI:<\/p>\n

On Monday, Otis had said that he was ready to give the precious articles to the Indian government for “free” if it decided to spend five per cent of its GDP on the poor.
<\/i><\/p>\n

Common sense from somebody at least. Or a slap on the face of the GOI. But apparently this remark of Otis\u2019s didn\u2019t wake it up to the fact that Gandhi\u2019s few material possessions are meaningless when compared to the Gandhian principles \u2013 principles which are neither followed, nor observed. What the GOI and it\u2019s bureaucrats do is pay lip-service (and hearing corrupt politicians mouthing empty Gandhisms is making my skin crawl) and now some big moolah to it. Wearing the Gandhi topi, or the Nehru jacket, or saving these \u201cprized\u201d possessions from going outside India, is not saving the \u201cnational heritage\u201d in any way. If Gandhi is watching us from somewhere above, I am sure he\u2019s wringing his hands in sheer disbelief.<\/p>\n

The items were auctioned off despite earlier indications they would not. They were bought by Dr. Vijay Mallya for $1.8 million. I assume everyone’s national pride is restored now ?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See my earlier post; it is indeed the week for stupidity. I refer of course to the efforts by the Government of India to save its \u201cnational heritage\u201d. By \u201cnational heritage\u201d I do not mean the beautiful, ancient buildings that lie neglected (the last time I visited the Taj Mahal, there were honeycombs on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,11,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-india","category-politics","category-recommended"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":5,"uagb_excerpt":"See my earlier post; it is indeed the week for stupidity. I refer of course to the efforts by the Government of India to save its \u201cnational heritage\u201d. By \u201cnational heritage\u201d I do not mean the beautiful, ancient buildings that lie neglected (the last time I visited the Taj Mahal, there were honeycombs on the…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}